Washington, Sept 06 (ANI): Researchers at the University of Toronto, including one of an Indian-origin, have found a surprising reason behind why some places are more prone to bribery and corruption than others - collectivism.
They found that the more collective feeling in a society, the more its members are likely to offer bribes.
Pankaj Aggarwal, University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) professor of marketing in the Department of Management, and Nina Mazar, University of Toronto professor of marketing discovered that people in more collectivist cultures - in which individuals see themselves as interdependent and as part of a larger society - are more likely to offer bribes than people from more individualistic cultures.
Their study suggests that people in collectivist societies may feel less individually responsible for their actions, and therefore less guilty about offering a bribe.
The researchers used data from a group called Transparency International, which rated the tendency of business people from 22 different countries to offer bribes to foreign business partners, and compared it with scores from another existing study that rated how collectivist each of those countries was.
They also brought in 140 business students for a laboratory experiment, divided them into two groups and primed with either an individualist or collectivist mindset using well-established manipulations.
The participants were then asked to assume the role of a sales agent competing against two other firms for a contract from an international buyer, and asked whether they would offer a bribe.
Fifty-eight percent of the students who had been primed with the collectivist task said that they would offer a bribe, compared with 40 percent who had been primed with the individualist word task.
The finding appears in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science. (ANI)
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